As Barcelona cruised to a 6-1 La Liga win over Celta Vigo last night, Lionel Messi set Luis Suarez up to complete his hat-trick in an audacious manner seen only a few times before.
Cast your mind back to when Thierry Henry failed to lay the ball off to Robert Pires for a failed example and cast your mind back even further to Johan Cruyff laying it off to Jesper Olsen to run the ball in for a successful example. Messi and Suarez's attempt was quite the latter.
Setting up as if to shoot at goal Messi instead flicks the ball to his right for Suarez to sprint into the box and finish past Celta Vigo goalkeeper Sergio Alvarez who had already hit the deck in anticipation of a Messi shot.
The hat-trick puts Suarez to the top of the La Liga goalscoring charts with 23 goals in 22 games but, as eagle-eyed viewers on Twitter do nowadays, it was pointed out that his third goal shouldn’t have counted.
As Messi reaches the ball to lay it off to Suarez the Uruguayan is in fact inside the ‘D’ on the edge of the box. That should mean that the penalty is re-taken.
But really the referee would have been spoiling the fun had he done that.
